-- Posted Sunday, 15 July 2012 | | Disqus

Egypt’s second richest man Naguib Sawiris has made a $500 million bid for the Canadian gold mining group Mancha Resources, the most spectacular move yet into the yellow metal by an Arabian businessman.

Mr Sawris confirmed to The National newspaper that talks are in progress but declined further comment, except to say La Mancha has a ‘geographically diverse portfolio of assets offering exposure to growth.’

Golden assets

La Mancha operates four gold mines in Africa and Australia. Mr Sawris and his even richer brother have amassed a multi-billion dollar fortune as the founders of Orascom Telecom and have major investments in cement, construction, fertilizers and hotels.

They have made a great deal of money by being early investors in sectors before their future value became apparent. But gold mines are a completely new field for Mr Sawris and mark a major diversification away from his past successes.

Naguib Sawiris is worth $3.1 billion and his brother Nassef $5.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. They could well be readers of the ArabianMoney investment newsletter which has been advising such a diversification strategy for some time (subscribe here).

It certainly does not say much for the global economic outlook that a man of such wealth is turning to the yellow metal as an investor rather than redeploying money into telecommunications, for example, where he has previously done so well.

Investment logic

But if you think the global economy is going to contract and the central banks print money to try to offset that deflation then it makes a great deal of sense to invest in precious metals. The price of these assets along with food, certain commodities like oil and even real estate are likely beneficiaries of central bank money printing even while the rest of the economy struggles at best with stagnation.

In this environment taking wealth out of the stagnant sector and putting it into an asset class that will benefit from reflation is a clever one. By buying a gold company Mr Sawris is also taking a bet that the highly depressed market for gold equities will outperform the metal itself as the price of gold goes up.

That is the theory, although it has not worked for the past few years. Arguably, however, that leaves gold mining shares cheap and even more attractive to bold investors like Mr Sawris. Perhaps his move is bold enough to spark a revaluation of the sector.

-- Posted Sunday, 15 July 2012 | Digg This Article

About Peter Cooper:
Oxford University educated financial journalist Peter Cooper found himself made redundant by Emap plc in London in the mid-1990s and decided to rebuild his career in Dubai as launch editor of the pioneering magazine Gulf Business. He returned briefly to London in 1999 to complete his first book, a history of the Bovis construction group.

Then in 2000 he went back to Dubai to become an Internet entrepreneur, just as the dot-com market crashed. But he stumbled across the opportunity to become a partner in www.ameinfo.com, which later became the Middle East's leading English language business news website.

Over the course of the next seven years he had a ringside seat as editor-in-chief writing about the remarkable transformation of Dubai into a global business and financial hub city. At the same time www.ameinfo.com prospered and was sold in 2006 to Emap plc for $27 million, completing the career circle back to where it began a decade earlier.

He remains a lively commentator and columnist as a freelance journalist based in Dubai and travels extensively each summer with his wife Svetlana. His financial blog www.arabianmoney.net is attracting increasing attention with its focus on investment in gold and silver as a means of prospering during a time of great consumer price inflation and asset price deflation.

Order my book online from this link

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